


Those Who Walk the Sea

by Orockthro



Category: Aquaman (2018)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Atlantis is the patriarchy, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Pre-OT3, early stages of relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 14:50:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19008016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: “I saw you today,” he says without preamble. He is the acting king, he needs no niceties, not even to the woman he is marrying. “With Nuidis Vulko.”Marius’s face does not shift. The marble statue of frightening anger remains as he swims closer to her, closes the gap between them, and clamps a gauntleted hand around her upper arm. The armor snags on her gossamer dress and tears the fabric.“If he comes near you again I will kill him.” Marius says.(Or, 35 years before the movie, Atlanna flees her arranged marriage not to save herself, but to save someone she cares deeply about, and together they find someone who cares about them. Told in three parts.)





	Those Who Walk the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



> For Rosecake. :) I saw your prompt and could do nothing less than write for you.

_ Once, when Atlanna was young and her hair almost white with youth, her father pulled her onto his lap and whispered into her ear, “One day you will be queen of this place. The whole sea will know that Atlanna, Queen of Atlantis, is there to protect them.” _

**Season of the Eel, 51st year of Atlin’s Reign**

“Today you will spend with Orvax Marius.”

Atlanna pauses, hands flexed on the back of the chair she has just floated up from. Her long, strong fingers are itching to find their home on her trident, itching to swim free in the north waters that have always been her refuge away from palace life and the obligations and duties that lie within. 

But she loves her father and has always carefully balanced her duty to him with her duty to herself, and so she says, “Is he whom you’ve picked?”

She says it carefully. Gently. But her voice does not waver.

And finally her father does look up at her. He looks, she is shocked to realize, old. Surrounded by the debris of leadership -- scrolls from the other nations littered around the table amongst the bones of the eel they just shared, endless lists of battles and skirmishes he keeps in check through a trade agreement here, a marriage proposal there -- he is a shade of what he once was. His hair is graying, becoming coarse and wild, and his armor fits him more loosely than she recalls.

“Yes,” he says. “Marius is a strong man. Atlantis needs a strong man as king.”

Because, Atlanna thinks but does not say, Atlantis no longer has one. 

“Then I shall spend the day with Orvax Marius,” she says. It is what will make her father happy, and she has no reason to doubt his marriage plans for her. And, as he said, Atlantis needs a king; the one it has will not swim the seas forever.

A chill runs down her spine as she swims from the room, not towards the armory to retrieve her trident, but towards her rooms to become adorned more properly in jewels and to meet the man who will become her husband. 

\--

Nuidis Vulko is the son of one of her mother’s cousin’s. He’s a stout but thin man with his long dark hair pulled back into a traditional bun, and his unassuming clothes hug his body and make him appear even slighter than he is, cloaking his wiry musculature. 

He’s a terrible snoop and cleverer than most of the men who hold positions in her father’s court combined, and when Atlanna goes to find him after the evening she spends being introduced to Orvax Marius meal she is unsurprised to learn he already knows everything. She can tell from the sly look on his face as he greets her.

“So? How did you find him? To your taste?”

She slides into his quarters-- as unassuming as Vulko himself, simple walls with simple glow fish swimming above their heads to light his chambers-- and closes the door. 

“Of course you already know.” She remembers the days in their childhood when she could still surprise him with things. Like many parts of their childhood, those days are long gone. 

He grins at her, a flash of the carefree boy he hasn’t been in several years. “You should know better than anyone that there are no secrets in Atlantis’s palaces. I know how to find answers. But you’re stalling. Orvax Marius.”

“He seemed perfectly agreeable. Certainly strong. A bit of a traditionalist, but I think he was just putting that on for Father.”

“So you’ll agree to the betrothal?”

She looks at him, and just like when she looked at her father, she sees the changes in Vulko that have crept up over the years. They are not children anymore. She reaches out for him and he clasps her hand in his. They fit well together. In another life... 

But that is not the life she was given. 

“Yes.”

\--

Her father dies. They craft a statement that he was wounded in one of the numerous skirmishes that continue in their border waters and his blood turned foul and poisoned his body from the inside. But the reality is that he simply stopped. He didn’t eat for two days, and withered and died not in battle but in bed. 

It is a scant two weeks since she has accepted Marius’s proposal. 

Atlanna mourns her father deeply and wears black for weeks instead of the customary royal white; her mourning continues long after the palace has moved on. 

On the fourth week one of her father’s generals, a man called Feilus, lifts the veil away from her and plucks it off her head after a meeting of state where she is ornamentally arranged on the diaus next to Marius, the now acting King, and it floats aimlessly in the water between them. “The time for mourning is over, Princess Atlanna,” he says. “The time for strength is now.”

It’s Vulko who explains what Felius means. It’s late at night and they’re in Vulko’s rooms again; Atlanna is able to escape her bodyguards with greater ease than Vulko is able to sneak into her rooms. 

“They want to launch an attack on Xebel.”

She looks at him, not wishing to draw the understanding he is trying to impart upon her. 

“But Xebel hasn’t attacked us.”

Vulko takes her hand, a mirror of before. He’s comforting her, she realizes in an abstract sort of way. It works, in the same abstract way. His hand is warm, and she can feel his pulse. 

“No. They haven’t. But Marius...”

He trails off, and Atlanna, never a fool herself, can fill in what he is too cautious to say out loud. Orvax needs to secure his seat. He and Atlanna are not wed yet, and how else does one become a king except through war?

“He will ruin us.” Atlanna, unlike Vulko, is not afraid of words.

\--

Orvax doesn’t request Altanna go to him that night. And he doesn’t see her in the morning, either. For days after the soldiers of Atlantis mount their sharks and swim through Atlantis’s grand gate, Atlanna lives in a quiet state of waiting. 

Waiting for Atlantis to come to its senses and stop the warmongering that Orvax is driving them towards. Waiting for Orvax to release her from their obligation since he clearly has no interest in her. Waiting for her father to come back. 

But he isn’t coming back. He’s dead.

And Atlantis smiles and cheers when the first battle with Xebel occurs and their soldiers, armed with not only Atlantean steal but also the element of surprise, return home victorious and dragging the bodies of their killed behind them, red running through the water like ribbons. 

Vulko is at her side when the soldiers parade through the gate. They’re watching from the balcony of the royal palace as they wind up the natural procession to the hall where Orvax is waiting for them. The people of the lower city are swimming a lather up with pent up excitement finally dispelled at the violence. They love it. 

She shudders as Orvax, who does not wait for them like her father would have, swims out to meet the returning forces. He’s dressed in full armor, and he glitters gold and silver and green in the water, a parody of the man who ruled before him. He lifts one of the fallen Xebel soldiers, cuts off his head with her father’s short sword, and throws it to the crowd. They swim for it like children begging for salt-fish.  

Atlanna turns away and Vulko’s hand tightens around hers. 

“I will not marry that man, Nuidis.” 

“Your wedding is only a few days away. To disobey the future king of Atlantis would be... very dangerous at this time. He has garnered a tremendous amount of power, including the army’s backing.”

“I know.”

She turns to face him. He’s still watching the revelry of violence below them, his eyes downcast but paying careful attention to every movement as it unfolds. That’s her Vulko, always watching. 

Then his eyes flit to hers and she sees in him her own horror. This is not his Atlantis, either, this writing violent thing. 

But he doesn’t comfort her. He pulls his hand away, gently. Orvax has his armored head tilted up, and Atlanna can feel his gaze upon them. It sends a cool chill down her spine; she has never been truly out of sight as the daughter of the king, but never has she felt so watched as she does now. 

“I’ll find you later,” Vulko says simply, and then he swims off and leaves her alone, staring down at the monster the man who was once Orvax Marius has become. 

\--

Marius finds her before Vulko does that evening. He slides into her rooms with the painful confidence of a man who knows he is already king. The jellyfish light above their heads bounces off his armored shoulders in orange and yellow, and the water has not washed clean the vestiges of today’s gore. 

“I saw you today,” he says without preamble. He is the acting king, he needs no niceties, not even to the woman he is marrying. “With Nuidis Vulko.”

She looks him in the eye and does not flinch from his gaze. He looks like one of the statues that adorn their city, frozen in a single emotion forever. In Marius’ case it is righteous fury, and at his words Atlanna’s blood runs cold and then magma hot. 

“Yes. He is my friend.”

“If he comes near you again I will kill him.” Marius says. 

The magma inside her veins bubbles and bursts free. “For what! Being kind to me while I mourn my father!”

Marius’s face does not shift. The marble statue of frightening anger remains as he swims closer to her, closes the gap between them, and clamps a gauntleted hand around her upper arm. It snags on her gossamer dress and tears the fabric. 

“Because you are mine, and he is nothing. I will slit his throat.”

Marius leaves, and Atlanna slips to the floor of her room, alone. 

\--

Vulko finds her; he’s always been good at that. Her sneaky Vulko, clever and quiet. He would make a terrible king. 

Her Vulko, her sneaky clever and quiet Vulko will die here. Orvax Marius is not a man to make a threat idly and Atlanna imagines his blood flowing through the water just like the captured soldiers, imagines Marius using her father’s short sword to do it. 

He comes through her door, sees her torn dress and her red eyes, and his face shatters. Her face likely does too, and she pulls him to her and holds him to her chest. 

“We need to leave,” she says. “Tonight. Atlantis is not our home anymore.”

Vulko argues, of course. He is not one to give up a fight easily. He wants her to leave, of course, because he thinks it is Atlanna who is in danger, not himself. He will cover for her, but he wants to stay and change their home from the inside, to make sure those who are still here and not loyal to Marius are safe and as protected as he can make them.

But she kisses the side of his face, holds him, and whispers, “I cannot watch you die. As your princess, give me this, please? Give me the gift of not watching you die?”

He drops to his knees and kisses the hem of her dress.

“You are my queen, now, not my princess. And I am, as always, your servant.”

\--

They leave three hours later with nothing but the clothes on their back and Atlanna’s trident.

\--

They make it as far as the northern fisheries before things begin to go awry. They trip one of the beacons set in place to detect encroachment from Xebel into Atlantis’s prized hunting grounds, and it pulses through the water while she curses. Within minutes a battalion will scramble and swim towards them. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to Vulko, although she’s not sure which of them swam too close to the trap and set it off. She’s not sorry for that. She’s sorry because now they’ll need to swim hard and fast through the night. Now they’ll need to swim without breaking to eat or sleep or catch their breath at all. 

And they do swim. But they’re caught anyhow. Two swimmers, fast as the two of them are, are no match for a troop transport ship in speed. 

A battalion catches them within the hour, and a dozen blue-masked Atlantian soldiers pour out of one of the city’s shark-shaped war ships like blood into the water. 

“Princess Atlanna,” one of them calls, his voice echoing through the water and through his armor’s face plate. “Cease your actions at once, at the order of the king.”

And Atlanna, who has never been one to hold her tongue, says back, “He is not a king yet,” and grasps Vulko’s hand with her left and her trident with her right. 

“Go,” she whispers, and they cut through the water like a knife, swimming away as fast as they can and this time towards the surface. Her body is burning with exertion, muscles locking up and burning but she pushes through it all to keep swimming. 

Behind her she hears the same soldier say, “Then by the order of the king, we are to bring you back to Atlantis by force.”

A shot burns through the water a few feet to the side, and Atlanna blinks hazzy green after images of its violence away. 

Her trident is in her hand but she does not yet know if she will use it. Will she kill Atlanteans who are following orders in her own quest for freedom? Orvax Marius is destroying Atlantis by laying down his principles; will she do the same?

The surface grows closer and closer, as do the soldiers closing the water between them with every breath. 

Atlanna considers their situation as a general would, the world slowing down as she does so. They are two of them, with only a single weapon and no escape route. There are six soldiers. If they survive the encounter, they will report back to Marius within the hour and additional forces will be mustered; Marius will not stop until he finds her. 

If all six soldiers are killed, they have another several hours before her disappearance is noticed, and the deaths of the soldiers will, at least at first, be attributed to Xebel skirmishes. 

As Atlanna swims it boils down to a single point: if these soldiers live, Vulko will die. Marius will find them, and Vulko will be killed without a moment’s hesitation. 

Atlanna turns, slips her hand free from Vulko’s, and catches not only him but also one of the soldiers off guard with her action. She strikes without hesitation, propelling herself towards him like a missle with her arm outstretched in front of her. Her trident catches the soldier through the chest, and she watches him die. He’s young, just a boy really, under his very grown-up armor, and he takes his last breath of water looking at her. 

His body slips off her trident to float gently down.

Vulko is staring at her, but she doesn’t have time to consider what he thinks of her. She strikes again, and again, moving with well-trained efficiency. Her trident is the best Atlantian steel yet to be forged, and it strikes its targets without fail, and her hand has no hesitation. The soldiers are wary to strike her, and warrier still to shoot at her. Marius wants a live bride, not a dead one. 

But they do not have that compunction for Vulko.

Vulko pulls a spear from the floating body of a dead man and hurls it into the chest of the last remaining soldier, but not before a sizzling blast is squeezed off towards him, a death act before the last soldier dies. The blast boils the water around it and finds its mark on Vulko’s shoulder, spinning him in a spray of blood in the water.

Atlanna screams. “Vulko!” 

She’s at his side in a second. He’s pale, his shoulder is steadily weeping blood into the water, but he’s conscious and alert. His face is grim and set both with pain and determination. “We must go, now.”

She holds his hand in hers, her trident pressed in front of her still stained with Atlantean blood, and swims for the surface, for something better. For freedom.

**October, 1984**

Tom Curry lives a simple life. He likes it like that; simple and honest. He does his job and he does it well. Keeps the light running, keeps the place from falling down around his ears which takes a bit of doing, and keeps a good watch on the sea. 

He’s seen his fair share of shipwrecks, and his fair share of bodies. He and the lighthouse do what they can, but the sea is a cruel mistress, and she wrecks any ship she pleases that gets too close to their treacherous shores. Any ship’s captain to be out in a storm like this is a fool, but Tom has met plenty of fools in his time.

So even with the wind howling and the rain coming in sideways, he keeps a strong eye out on the sea. The shutters fly off in a particularly strong gust and though he would prefer to stay safe and dry and warm, it’s his job to keep the lighthouse in good working condition, and so he dons his rain slick and his boots and goes out into the rain to wrangle the storm shutters closed again.

And then he sees her.

She’s in white on the rocks, and he’s half sure he’s seeing things, but he drops the rope and picks up a flashlight anyway, and when he looks again as he makes his way down the rocks, she’s still there. A woman, blonde hair curled around her face, dressed in white... it’s like something out of a fairytale. 

But then he sees the blood, and Tom does what he always does: he gets to work. He picks her up, only noticing the spear-thing frozen in her hand after she’s in his arms. She refuses to let go of it, and so he scrambles up the rocks with both her and it balanced in his arms.

She wakes enough to hiss and spit at him as he navigates the slippery rocks, “No! Where... where is he?”  Nonsensical things, mostly, but she’s breathing and warm enough to talk despite the frigid water. Which he takes as a good sign, but by the time he has her up to the house she’s fainted again. She’s heavier than she looks-- tall and dense with muscle-- and he drops her onto the kitchen table with relief burning in his arms. 

“Forgive my, ah, intrusion here,” he says to her unconscious face, and goes about looking for the source of the blood. Only to find that under her strange white suit there is nothing but pale skin, unblemished and hale. 

A shiver runs down his spine as he remembers her fever-like mumblings. “Oh shit. You were with someone.”

His boots and rain slick are still on, and he turns around without a second thought to go back to the rocks below. The wind is still whipping strong and it’s near impossible to see through the spray of salt water and black night air, but he stumbles down to where he found the woman and begins to shout.

“Hello? Is anyone there? Are you hurt?”

He can’t see anything, and he’s caught three times by a swell that nearly gets him off the rocks and into the water, despite his knowledge of the waters here. There’s nothing but dark, slick shapes, nothing like the white of the woman that stood out. 

And then he sees something, a patch of pale amongst the dark. He squints, and he sees it again, flesh against something dark and seal-wet. A hand. 

Tom leaves the flashlight jammed between two rocks and hollers out again as he descends towards the person. “Hello, can you hear me?” 

There’s another swell of the sea and he grabs the hand and pulls with all his weight, hoping he’s not doing more damage than good, and the body moves with him as the sea tries desperately to suck them both back down. 

He leaves the flashlight, hauls the person up over his back, and scrambles up half on his hands and knees before they’re both lost. 

By the time Tom has the second person safely in his home, he’s trembling with exhaustion, nerves, and the rushing release of adrenalin. This one is a man, similar in age, dressed in a black wetsuit of a similar material. The man is pale and unconscious where Tom dropped him on the sofa, but it isn’t just salt water seeping into the cushions, it’s blood as well, so Tom rallies himself to first check on the woman, who is still breathing and appears stable, and then peel apart the wetsuit at the odd seams to search for a wound. 

He finds an arm that is bloodied but whole, but still sluggishly weeping blood, so he dries the skin with a bath towel that immediately becomes damp and stained, cleans what he can see with the bottle of alcohol in his first aid kit, and then wraps the arm up as tight as he dares. He ought to move the woman to his bed, somewhere more comfortable than the kitchen table, but he doesn’t think he has the strength to get her up the stairs. So he lifts her as carefully and gently as he can to the floor next to the sofa, and drapes a blanket across both of them. 

Then Tom sits back on the floor, his back against a chair’s legs, and takes a deep breath. 

What a day.

*

The strangers sleep or remain unconscious for long enough that Tom can clean up a little. The electricity is up and running again but the phone line is down so he can’t call out and he doesn’t think they’re in dire enough shape to risk driving in the storm that’s still beating like hell against his shutters. 

So he hunkers down, heats up some soup out of a can on the electric stovetop-- his hands are shaking too much to even think of whipping up a proper meal-- and drifts off into a doze half way through his bowl of Campbell's Tomato Bisque, his elbows propped up on the table that’s still half soaked through with sea water. 

When he wakes it’s to the sound of a woman speaking. It’s a strange enough sound that he’s pulled out of a sleepy, dream-like state into full awareness in a breath, and he lifts his head from the table to see the blonde woman crouched on the floor, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She’s leaning over her companion, his hand in hers, talking softly.

“You’re awake,” Tom says, before he’s fully aware the words are leaving his mouth. “I mean, of course you are. You’re alright? What were you doing out there in that storm?”

He’s halfway through asking his questions when she whips around, drops the man’s hand and picks up instead the five-pointed spear he didn’t see fit to part her from, and hefts it into the air with a terrifying ease that speaks of practice. 

Tom lifts his hands in the air quickly. “Woah! Woah, I’m not going to hurt you.” It’s much more likely, he thinks, that she will hurt him at this rate. But it seems the right thing to say, and she does lower the spear a fraction of an inch. 

“Where are we?”

Her voice is lovely. It’s a silly thing to think while she’s still threatening his person with what looks like a very lethal projectile, but it’s true. Her voice is clear and strong and graceful, and in a fraction of an instant, Tom falls a bit in love. 

“Maine. At my lighthouse. I think...” he pauses to consider his words. “I think maybe I ought to ask where  _ you’re _ from, actually.”  

Because the more he looks at the two of them, the more he thinks it’s not here. Maybe a  _ lot _ not here.

She straightens and stands tall; her spear doesn’t waver but something changes and he no longer feels like it might leap from her hand to his throat at a second’s notice. Tall and gleaming in the morning light that drifts through his windows as the storm breaks and the sun returns, she says, “I am Atlanna, Queen of Atlantis,” and a shiver runs down Tom’s back.

“I’m Tom Curry. Of my lighthouse,” he says back, because he never could keep his mouth shut, his mother said so and she was right. But despite it all, he doesn’t think she’s lying. And he doesn’t think she’s crazy, either. Maybe that makes  _ him _ crazy. That was another thing his mum said often enough. 

“You bound his arm?”

He nods, turning his attention away from the woman and her gleaming, glittering presence to the man in her inverse colors, still prone on his sofa. “Is he awake?” 

“Not yet. He lost too much blood on our journey.” 

“Your journey. From... Atlantis.”

She sets the spear down against his bookshelf and it clangs with a sound unlike any metal Tom is used to hearing. Another shiver runs down his back, but he’s not afraid. And yup, he’s definitely the crazy one.

“Yes,” she says, and kneels back down at her companion’s side. There’s a beautiful devotion she has for him; it’s like Tom melts from the room and it’s just her and him, and Tom, for once in his life, is afraid of ruining it with his big mouth.

He does anyway.

“What can we do to help him?” He inches closer, and in the morning light he can see for the first time that the man’s garb, like the woman’s-- Atlanna’s-- is not matt black. It glitters, a hundred different iridescent colors across the scaly surface that clings to him. And Tom decides, quickly and with the surety that is as much a part of his person as his nose, that he believes them. 

Atlanna looks to him with a shining, frightened face that Tom would do just about anything to make laugh instead. “I don’t know. I was never a healer.” 

“Well let’s take another look, shall we?” Tom says, and closes the distance completely. The wound doesn’t look terrible, all things considered. In fact, it looks considerably better than it did last night-- less like raw hamburger-- and he’s pretty sure that’s not the difference in lighting. It actually healed, visibly, in just a few hours. 

“This looks pretty good, actually. A lot better than last night.” He leans in close, puts back the bandage, and taps the man gently on the cheek, hoping to rouse him. 

And rouse him he does, as he lands solidly on his ass with a red-stained hand wrapped around his throat. 

“Vulko!”

At the sound of Atlanna’s voice the man-- Vulko, Tom supposes-- unclenches his fingers enough for Tom to suck in a greedy breath. 

His vocal chords strain around the man’s hand, “Vulko, yeah? Hi there. Tom. Nice to meet you.”

He’s dropped, and Vulko slumps back to the sofa pale-faced, exhausted or in a faint, with Atlanna gripping his elbow and glued to his side the entire time.

Tom rubs at his throat, clears it, and says, “So, who wants some lunch?”

\--

He makes scrambled eggs. They’ve never eaten an egg before, let alone a scrambled one with pepper. They make a face each and drown the food in salt before calling it acceptable for consumption, but they eat it. They stare at him, and he stares back, and he smiles at them and, slowly, they smile back, too.

He makes them tea. They drink it.

He shows them the lighthouse, they listen to his ramblings about weather patterns and wind and tides with patient and curious rapture.

They stay the night, and he tucks them up in his bed while he himself takes the still-damp sofa with the puppy. 

In the morning he gives them spare clothes of his to wear, makes pancakes-- another new delight-- and Atlanna tells him about the ocean. About a man named Orvax Marius. About a home that no longer home. 

Then the three of them sip at his whiskey and Atlanna and Vulko crawl up the stairs to fall asleep in his bed, and he takes his place upon the couch. 

\--

“You know,” he says to them, on the fifth morning that they join him in his kitchen for tea and eggs and toast-- he needs to drive down to the town and get more supplies soon and things should be back up and running everywhere by now. He stocked the lighthouse with enough provisions to see a bachelor through a storm, not enough to see three adults through one. “You could stay. If you wanted. There’s enough room here, and I don’t mind the couch. It’s been nice having the company, and no offence but it doesn’t seem like you have anywhere else to go.”

There’s an awkward silence as the two of them look at one another and have a silent conversation consisting of eye flickers. 

Tom clears his throat. “Of course, no obligation. You’re a queen, after all. I’m sure you have other places to be. Once you’ve rested up, that is.”

And he hands over a piece of toast, buttered and covered in sweet jam, for Atlanna to gobble up. 

 

**Season of the Seals, 1st Year of Marius’s Reign**

At first Vulko thinks they are staying because of his wound. For the first several days that they spend on the surface, breathing air only ghosted by salt and walking on compacted soil and rock under a gravity that feels barbaric, he accepts this kindness from his queen. 

He heals. He is weak, weaker than he has ever been, from blood loss and exertion and pain. So he rests, drifting in and out and allowing himself not to be vigilant because his queen whispers, “Please, rest. I will take care of you,” into his ear. And he believes her. 

And when he wakes more fully, it is to find that the man who pulled them from the sea and onto the land is not the barbarian surfacer he was taught to expect, but a kind human. One who feeds them, bandages them, and gives his bed to them. 

It is enough to make Vulko’s already spinning head spin harder. For several days he waits for it to shift, waits for the human to realize what they are more fully, to want to exploit them, or cut them open, or find out their secrets. But he doesn’t. He makes them a thing called tea, and wraps a blanket around Vulko’s shoulders when he starts to fade out of a conversation, body still cold and shocky, and mind still want to blur. 

He’s laying in that man’s bed, Atlanna pressed along his side. She turns to him and presses a kind kiss to his ear.

“Oh Vulko, always thinking.”

“One of us must,” he tosses back, but there’s not even a playfulness in his voice this time. He is thinking. He’s thinking of what they will do next. “Even if Xebel will take us, Marius will find us there. Atlantis has spies in every sea, and a dozen in Xebel alone. And with Atlantis’s aggression, Xebel may not have us anyway.” 

He is strong enough to leave now, should they need to. And they must make a plan. If not Xebel then something else. There is so little safety in the sea, now. Marius is certainly scheming by this point, and Vulko would be deeply surprised if there was not a full scale war mounting as Marius tries to secure his seat without Atlanna to symbolically bolster him. After all, they did not wed, and Marius has no actual stake to the throne without her. 

Atlanna kisses the spot next to his ear again. 

“What if we stay. Tom asked us to, after all.” 

She doesn’t say it as a question. He turns to look at her, and he sees her as if for the first time. She is in Tom Curry’s flannel shirt, her hair buoyant in the air even with gravity and floating around her head on the pillow. She looks healthy. Happy. She doesn’t look like a queen, but a woman who is free. And so telling that she calls him Tom. Vulko thinks of the fond looks between them, how enraptured Tom is by her voice, the way her hands linger on his arm when she tells a story. 

Vulko looks at himself with the same eye. He, too, is dressed in their kind caretaker’s clothing. He is less hale, but equally content. Equally taken care of. Equally free. 

She laughs at him, but gently. “Just consider it.”

\--

He does. He considers it when he helps Tom Curry, who insists on being called “just Tom” move waste materials washed up on shore from the storm into the bed of his land vehicle, a red, four-wheeled combustion machine he calls a truck. Atlanna would be better suited for the task, but Tom insists Vulko help him, and Vulko feels no need to make their host upset.

“It’ll be good for your shoulder to get some use. I’ve seen people get hurt and not use their arms or legs, and things never quite get back up to speed,” he says while loading Vulko’s outstretched arms with a pile of rotting timber from some now destroyed structure. “You heal so damned fast, it’s incredible.” 

And he smiles, wide and pure, and doesn’t say a thing about wanting to sell them to his leader, or drain him of his blood to discover what makes him regenerate at this speed. 

“Thank you,” Vulko says. And he stands there with the wood in his arms and doesn’t take it to the truck. “Thank you for helping us.” Atlanna has said it but he hasn’t, content until now to let her speak for both of them. 

Tom blushes. It’s charming, and Vulko finds himself blushing, too, completely against his will. 

“Well,” Tom says, smiling and not shying away from anything, “when a man finds himself in a fairytale with two beautiful underwater royals washed up at his lighthouse, there’s really only one thing to do.”

There are several things Vulko considers simultaneously: Tom finds them both to be beautiful; Tom thinks them both to be royalty even though Atlanna is queen and Vulko is nothing more than a cousin’s cousin of her mother’s family; Tom does not realize or refuses to acknowledge that kindness and generosity are not answers every man comes to when posed with the presence of a hitherto unknown species at their most vulnerable. 

And Vulko, considering all these thoughts at once, lays down the ruined pieces of lumber into the truck bed, and turns to face Tom fully and unencumbered. 

He does what Atlanna would do. He closes the distance between them and places a hand on Tom’s warm shoulder. The man doesn’t flinch. 

Then he leans forward and presses a chaste kiss to Tom’s face, on his cheekbone, a scant inch from his ear. Fealty.

Their heights are similar, both of their bodies warmed from the physical work of dredging up long lost pieces of the past crushed by the sea, and they fit together. They fit  _ well  _ together. They both smell like salt water and fresh air that Vulko is still getting used to the scent of. 

But Tom steps back. He’s still blushing, his face heated and flushed pink and it makes him look young. “I don’t want to get in between something here,” he says. 

Vulko cocks his head to the side, confused. Tom smiles, a bit sadly perhaps. “You and Atlanna,” he says, kindly. “I’m not a man to ruin beautiful things.”

\--

That evening, after they drive the refuse to a man further inland who pays Tom in paper money for the material by its weight, they go back to the lighthouse. Atlanna is standing at the edge of the dock as twilight hits, and Vulko is hit with a pang of something he cannot identify. 

Not apprehension-- he knows Atlanna, and she may someday leave, but not today. Perhaps love. This is his queen, standing in the open air, now queen of somewhere new. 

She turns and comes to them as they park the truck. The air is cold, but it doesn’t bother Vulko, and Tom seems happy enough to stand out in the wind under his animal hair coat. 

Vulko speaks before Atlanna can. “Yes,” he says to her. And his queen, his clever, brave queen, smiles wide. And, in front of her while she watches with her eyes shining and pleased, he retraces his kiss to Tom’s brown cheekbone, and feels the skin heat under his lips. 

Atlanna comes to his side, grasps Vulko’s hand in hers, and then, tentatively, reaches out for Tom’s hand. 

“We would like to stay.”


End file.
